


Washed Away

by JeanZedlav



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Gen, LGBTQ Character, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo 2020, no canon characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27575354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanZedlav/pseuds/JeanZedlav
Summary: The deputy of RiverClan finds a kit in the river next to Sunningrocks. Finding his home leads through old secrets, new lies, and a field of blood. Frostnose follows wherever the path may go.





	Washed Away

**Author's Note:**

> No warrior can neglect a kit in danger, even if the kit is from a different Clan.

The thin layer of frost that had formed over the well-trodden grass track that led away from the river and wound between thick bushes of the camp barrier was unbroken by pawprints when Frostnose padded through the entrance to the RiverClan camp. 

Past the camp, the sound of the running river could be heard, but none of the warriors were awake yet. Through the tangle of reeds that formed the entrance to the den, the pelts of the youngest warriors could be dimly seen, and even the dawn patrol slept soundly in their nests, waiting for the first rays of the sun. On silent paws, the molly slipped through the camp, only the frost disturbed in her wake. Past the reeds that sheltered the warriors and thick coating of moss woven into the apprentice den, past the deep olive sedge, and against the slope, the medicine den was warm and sweet in contrast to the cold and crisp air of the riverbank.

She placed her burden on the floor of the den and approached the nest where the elder of the medicine cats slept, keeping her voice low as she spoke against his ear. “Sunfang. Sunfang, wake up.” When the cat continued to snore, she prodded him firmly with one forepaw, and he started awake loudly enough to alarm the molly in the other nest in the den. 

“Frostnose?” The handsome young cat blinked at her through eyes still half-closed, dazed with sleep.

“I need help.” She angled her head to look at the kit curled up against her front paw. 

“Where did you get a kit?” Mousepaw’s blue eyes peeked out of her nest at her. She blinked curiously, before uncurling smoothly from her nest and crossing the flat ground under the sedge and to sniff at her herbs. Sunfang was slower in crawling from his nest, but once up he nudged Frostnose aside and carefully picked the kit up off the cold ground and placed him in the feather-lined nest that Mousepaw had abandoned. 

“I found him,” Frostnose stepped back to let him work, her tail bumping into the sedge wall as she did so. She blinked down at her wet fur as if noticing it for the first time, the clumps of mud on her paws and the long overcoat soaked through in the cold morning air, and set about briskly drying it. 

With a squeak so soft that it was lost in the moss, the kit snuggled down into the lingering warmth. Sunfang huffed, and began to groom the wet and mud from his pelt. At the rough treatment, the kit stretched out his forepaws and squeaked again, opening pale green eyes. The medicine cat ignored the kit’s protests. “He’s very weak and he has a cough. Bring me-”

Before he could finish, Mousepaw dropped a bundle of leaves in front of him, and sat back to crush a pawful of them. Sunfang prodded the pile with a forepaw, sending the carefully stacked leaves tumbling over. He eyed them carefully, then swept them up. “Very good, Mousepaw. Where did you find him, the riverbed? He’s certainly swallowed enough water.”

One paw was holding her tail still now, so that she could dry it. The smooth rasp of her tongue continued for a moment before she released it to curl around her haunches and replied. “I found him near Sunningrocks.”

“Perhaps a ThunderClan kit, then.” Sunfang mused, sorting through the herbs to find what he wanted while trying to keep the kit awake. “I don’t scent a Clan on him, but he’s half-drowned anyway.”

“I need to speak with Kestrelstar.” She eyed the kit cautiously. He looked more like a drowned rat than a kitten, Clan or no. “He  _ will _ live, won’t he?”

“He will,” Sunfang promised, not bothering to look up from his work.

“Keep the news quiet until I return,” she glanced out at the first rays of dawn in the clearing. The fresh-kill pile had dwindled to nothing overnight, but it would not be long before warriors filled the camp again. 

Mousepaw looked up from crushing the juice from her herbs into the kit’s mouth. “If he’s to live past moonhigh, he will need a queen.”

Frostnose touched her nose to her daughter’s shoulder, reassuring. “I will not be long.”

Under the first touch of the sun’s rays, she found a few warriors in tight groups outside the warriors den, mostly young warriors. She had found that younger warriors tended to be woken early for patrols and hunting, no matter if they were early risers or not, while the senior warriors could now sleep later if they pleased. This meant that she had to pass the slowly growing crowd to enter the den, and find the nest she shared with the enormous molly in the center.

Tigerclaw blinked at her as she approached, half-awake already from the soft sounds of movement in the den, and purred softly as Frostnose pressed their heads together. The older cats in the Clan were still nervous of the larger cat, but Frostnose would have rolled her out of her nest to wake her if she had to. Her mate rumbled a greeting. “Morning.”

“I need you to take a patrol to Sunningrocks.” She meowed without preamble, voice quiet enough not to carry.

Immediately awake, Tigerclaw lifted her head. “More trouble from ThunderClan?”

Tail twitching across the floor of the den, Frostnose shook her head. “I don’t know. Go first, and scent around the rocks. You’re looking for one warrior, not many. I need to know who was there last night.”

“We’ll probably find half the Clan.” She grumbled. Frostnose huffed in reply, amused, then returned to the warriors outside the den as the molly scraped herself out of their nest and went to put together a patrol. 

Thistletail was chatting with a few other warriors, and she looked up eagerly as Frostnose approached, interrupting her before she could pass. “The dawn patrol already left, I was hoping to take a hunting patrol out? Our fresh kill pile is barely enough for the queens and elders this morning.” 

She was right. An apprentice had already dragged away the last of the fish for the elders since Frostnose had crossed the clearing last. “Take a few cats down to the river. See if you can catch a pike for Nightwhisker, it might do her good.”

“I’d go hunting for eels if I thought I could catch one,” Thistletail laughed, “but I’ll bring something back for her.”

While the younger molly gathered up her friends to venture down to the river, Frostnose turned her attention back to her own concerns. Beneath her paws, the ground was warmer than before, the day nearing dawn. She trotted across camp to the roots of the ancient willow that kept the worst of the storms off the camp, and nosed through the tightly woven entrance to the den. Inside Kestrelstar still slept, chest rising and falling steadily in his glittering nest, unaware of the night’s events. Without hesitation, Frostnose shoved him to the side, earning a grumble, and squeezed into the nest beside him. 

“You’re  _ freezing _ ,” he hissed. The cold was an abrupt awakening, and he withdrew to the far side of his nest. Frostnose paid him no mind, and promptly took up any space he gave away, until their white-and-brown pelts were again mingled. Displeased, he huffed, but began to groom the cold from her pelt regardless. “It’s hardly mid-leaf-fall, how are you so cold?”

She burrowed her muzzle in his thick fur and let the warmth from his nest creep into her bones before answering. “I couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk.”

Steady and comforting, the rasp of his tongue continued. Not for the first time, Frostnose felt like an apprentice crawling into her brother’s nest to together clean blood from their pelts and chase away the fright. “Bad dreams?”

It would be unfair to come crying to him about her bad dreams, Frostnose mused to herself, when she was likely the cause of some of his. Certainly, she was the cause of many of his waking troubles. “Not tonight. Something was just… wrong.”

“How many moons has it been since something was truly  _ wrong _ , Frostnose?” He asked, half-amused, almost chiding. She might have clawed the ears off anyone else for the tone he took. For Kestrelstar, she let it go. 

“Not enough.” Frostnose flexed her claws against the reeds of his nest just to feel them, to remember herself. From birth all Clan cats were taught to rely on their Clanmates. That for one to suffer meant that they all did, and for one to succeed meant the success of the entire Clan. She and Kestrelstar had not had that assurance. “Never enough.”

“Those who hurt us and destroyed RiverClan are gone,” Kestrelstar soothed, “Let the dead lie with the dead.”

“Some that still live deserve death.” She looked at him now, her blue eyes catching his orange ones. If putting the past behind them was the path Kestrelstar chose, Frostnose had long since given up any right to argue with him about it, but that did not mean it did not make her pelt itch to pretend nothing was wrong. “And many that died deserve life. Where is their justice?”

“Frostnose-”

Before he could say more, she cut him off. “I walked along the river’s edge until I came to Sunningrocks. I had thought about crossing the river, but it was too cold, even this early in the season. But when I reached Sunningrocks, I found a cat on the other side of the river.” 

Kestrelstar’s ears pricked at that, alarmed. “A patrol? On Sunningrocks? Do you think-”

“Not a patrol. Just one cat.” Frostnose’s insistence quieted him. “One cat, watching something in the water. At first I thought that Onestar had sent a patrol to attack our camp, but what ThunderClan cat would swim when they could cross the stepping stones? And there were no warriors in the water.”

“We should send a patrol to investigate,” Kestrelstar looked over her back to the entrance of the den, where the muffled sound of warriors was beginning to filter through. “They might have been scouting for a daytime attack, once they could see the water better.”

“I sent Tigerclaw to investigate, and the dawn patrol is out as well.”

“You’ve had a busy morning for someone who couldn’t sleep.” He sniffed at her fur one last time, then sat up to stretch the sleepiness out of his muscles. “As long as Tigerclaw’s patrol doesn’t find anything you should take a few cats out near sunhigh, just to show ThunderClan that Sunningrocks is still ours.”

Purring, amused, Frostnose wrapped her tail around her side. She had to admit, it was a better excuse than most for the deputy to be napping in the middle of the day. “That isn’t all. There’s a kit in the medicine den I fished out of the river near Sunningrocks. A kit that whoever was on their side of the river knew about.”

Straightening, Kestrelstar looked down at her, playfulness abruptly gone. “A ThunderClan kit?”

“Neither Sunfang nor I can scent any Clan on him, but he was all but drowned when I pulled him from the river,” Frostnose blinked up at him, watched as he considered this new information. “But when I got out of the water with him, on the wrong side of the river, nocat came to claim him.”

“Do you think they saw you?”

“I know that if a RiverClan kit was drowning, and somecat had jumped in to save them, I would have seen them and gone to claim the kit. Even if I had to cross into their territory to do so.” She sat up as he padded to the entrance and ducked through, unwilling to abandon the warmth, but resigned to following him outside. 

In the clearing, most of the camp was awake, from the elders sharing prey outside of their den to the eager scuffling of kits in the nursery. Kestrelstar had paused to wait for her, waiting until she reached his side to speak, so he did not need to raise his voice. “Is the kit still with Sunfang?”

“Yes. He was asleep when I left.” Her brother followed her across the clearing, greeting warriors when they trailed close or spoke to them. The thick hedge surrounding the medicine den smelled of herbs and river, and inside Sunfang was picking through his herbs. In the nest where she had left the kit, Mousepaw was curled around him, her thick fur offering much-needed warmth.

“I was wondering when you’d be back,” Sunfang put down the flower he was holding and approached the nest where Mousepaw lay. She carefully moved so that they could see the kit, but he did not wake. Now that the water and mud was cleaned from his fur, the kitten was a beautiful pale-brown-and-white pattern that Frostnose had never seen before, anywhere. “He woke briefly, and Mousepaw convinced him to eat some chamomile. We asked him who his mother was, but he refused to speak.”

Deeply asleep, the kit looked tiny and frail, but he had to be at least three weeks old. Old enough to have started walking and old enough to form at least a few words. If he belonged to ThunderClan, he was old enough to know. Kestrelstar sniffed at the top of the kit’s pelt. “Can he talk?”

“He’s old enough.” Mousepaw’s wide blue eyes made her look half a kit herself. 

“But some kits don’t begin talking until later than most.” Sunfang sat next to the nest and curled his tail around his paws. “Some because they mature later than their siblings, but others for more concerning reasons.” 

Mousepaw looked up at her mentor. “You think his mother abandoned him?”

“You said there was no scent on him when you pulled him from the river?” Kestrelstar asked, looking to Frostnose.

“None of other cats. Only that of the river.”

“And the cat you saw, did he see you?”

“If he had been watching the kit to save him, he would have seen me.” Of that much, Frostnose was sure. It was impossible to miss a snow white cat chasing after something that precious on a moonlit night.

“There is always the chance that the cat you saw had nothing to do with the kit,” Sunfang offered. “He might have been passing by, seen the kit, like you did, and seen that you were helping him. A ThunderClan cat or a loner would not be able to swim out to save him, or to reach your side of the river.”

“Or he might have been the reason the kit was in the river,” Frostnose was all too familiar with kits being mistreated. It set her on edge, the idea that somecat might have have thrown this kit in the river intentionally. Even a RiverClan kit could not swim at so young an age.

“We can’t assume that,” Kestrelstar protested. 

“We could send a patrol to ThunderClan and ask if they’re missing a kit,” Sunfang looked down to the kit, studying his pelt as if hoping his unusual coloring would give them answers. “But if Frostnose is correct, then returning him may not be the best choice.”

Tail flicking, Kestrelstar looked from the medicine cat to Frostnose. “The Gathering is in three days. If ThunderClan mentions that they lost a kit, we will return him. We can also make some inquiries among their warriors. Adderwhisker or Lionclaw may know something.”

“What about the kit?” Mousepaw asked. “He needs milk.”

“Does Mothpelt still have milk?” Kestrelstar asked Sunfang.

“No, her kits are too old. And Cherryface hasn’t kitted yet.” He offered nothing else, but Mousepaw had looked on all the while and took up where he faltered.

“Nightwhisker still has milk,” she meowed. “I took her more parsley yesterday.”

“But to ask her to take a kit…” Kestrelstar hesitated. “It would be cruel.”

“She’s the only choice.”

“If he is ThunderClan, it would be another kit taken away,” Sunfang said slowly, as if rolling the thought over in his head. “And besides, introducing a new kit to a queen is always a risk. He may not nurse, or he may die later because of his near-drowning. Nightwhisker would be heartbroken.”

“But she is the only choice,” Frostnose was distinctly aware that every cat in the den was watching her. “I will speak to her.”

“I can, if you would prefer.” Kestrelstar offered.

“No, she is my kit. I will do it.”

“If she agrees, send her here,” Sunfang instructed, “I want to watch the kit for a few days; he may still have water in his lungs. We have poppy and borage here for Nightwhisker, as well.”

Frostnose took one last look at the kit cuddled up next to Mousepaw, his fluffy pelt and steady breathing making him seem the exact opposite of the frighteningly still, tiny kit she had risked herself to save. She had brought him here, so he was her responsibility to protect. Kestrelstar remained with Sunfang, but she left the den for the sunlit clearing beyond, emptier now that it had been earlier, warriors gone hunting and patrolling. 

Not three tail lengths past the olive sedge that sheltered the medicine den her thoughts were interrupted. “Adderwhisker was pregnant at the last Gathering.”

The only other cats in the clearing were two apprentices on the opposite side of the camp, clearing out the elder’s den. Frostnose had thought she was alone, but Cherryface was curled up with a water vole near the apprentice den, heavy belly covered by her fluffy tail. Patient and intelligent, she was a decent warrior, but, somehow, the molly always knew the choicest pieces of gossip. Frostnose considered her. “So were several ThunderClan warriors.”

Cherryface’s head tipped to the side, her hazel eyes curious. “Not any who had hidden it from their Clanmates.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing a much, much longer fic from another fandom, but NaNoWriMo is killing me with writer's block, so this has been what I work on when I can't come up with anything for that.


End file.
